


a truth you can't take back

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27444373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: It's more than a desire to be contrary that's kept Jemma from acquiescing to Grant's demands to see her.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 8
Kudos: 99





	a truth you can't take back

**Author's Note:**

> WEEK FORTY FIVE, Y'ALL!!! I spent all week sick and truly didn't think I was gonna be able to get anything up, but here we are! I started this fic foreeeeeeeeever ago and somehow finally found an ending for it. Thank goodness.
> 
> I hope you're all well and your weekends are going great! Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

Jemma feels ill. It must be showing on her face, because Coulson is looking more apologetic by the second.

“Simmons,” he says, “if we had any other choice…”

He trails off helplessly, and she has to look away. As much as she would love to tell him precisely where he can put his _choice_ , she knows she can’t. She can’t protest and certainly can’t offer an alternate plan.

All she can do—all she’s been able to do for hours—is watch the video play on loop. It’s the feed from a public security camera and thus incredibly poor in quality, but even if the grainy footage _hadn’t_ been playing on repeat for the last one hundred and ninety seven minutes, she would still know exactly what it shows.

She was listening when it happened—when the mission took an abrupt, disastrous turn and Skye, Fitz, and Trip were all captured. She could do nothing but stand here in this very office and listen, helpless, as three of her dearest friends were surrounded and overpowered by Hydra agents.

Jemma tries not to think of the last thing she heard before the comms went dead—of the desperation in Skye’s voice as she screamed Fitz’s name—and utterly fails.

On the screen, Fitz crumples like a puppet with its strings cut. She turns away.

“May and Hunter are on their way back,” Coulson says, “but they’ll be hours. By that time—”

“The others could be dead,” she interrupts. “I know, sir. Believe me, I am _more_ than aware of the potential outcomes. But what you’re asking…”

“It’s too much,” he agrees. “And it’s not the least bit fair. I know that. And I haven’t forgotten that I promised you would never have to do this. But Simmons—Jemma.”

She presses her lips together, holding back words and tears both, and looks up at him.

“Jemma,” he repeats. “You’re the only one he’ll talk to. And right now, he’s our only hope.”

It’s true. She knows it is. Their knowledge of Hydra is depressingly scarce; they’ve only managed to identify _one_ base, and even that only tentatively. Even if they were sure, there’s no guarantee that particular potential base is the one the others were taken to—their intel on the warring heads, and any way to distinguish between any one Hydra’s forces, is equally scant.

They can’t mount a rescue if they can’t _find_ the others, and right now, they don’t even know where to begin looking.

But someone will. The monster in their basement, the team’s personal boogeyman—a boogeyman who has flatly refused to share any of his extensive knowledge of Hydra unless asked by Jemma. Thus far, all such requests have been met with vehement refusal…but to deny him now may well result in Skye, Fitz, and Trip’s deaths—or worse.

The only problem is, it hasn’t been contrariness that’s kept Jemma out of Vault D. It’s been desperation—the need to keep a very important secret.

“He’ll know as soon as he sees me,” she says helplessly. “Sir, I don’t—I can’t—”

Coulson crouches in front of her and takes her hands in his. He’s been much more tactile with her lately; they all have, in truth. Something about her current state apparently erases all barriers of personal space.

(In one way, it’s nice. In another, it’s bloody frustrating.)

“Jemma,” he says, squeezing her hands. “That cell is impenetrable. He’s not getting out of it. Ever. I know you wanted to keep this from him, and I understand that, I really do. But I promise you, there’s no need. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t know: he can’t do anything with it from Vault D.”

“And he’s never leaving Vault D,” she says—or perhaps asks.

She’s been reassured on this count at least a thousand times. She’s examined the cell’s specifications herself. She knows perfectly well that the only way he’ll be getting out is if they drop the barrier and let him out themselves—which will, of course, not be happening.

Still…

“He’s never leaving,” Coulson swears, hands tightening around hers. “I know I have no right to ask you to do this. But I’m asking anyway.”

She swallows and looks again to the looping footage. Trip falls; in her head, Fitz’s shout echoes.

“All right,” she says. She takes a deep breath in, holds it, and lets it out slowly. It doesn’t calm her. “I’ll do it.”

He visibly sags in relief, then straightens. “Thank you.” He squeezes her hands once more before dropping them. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“No,” she says, and he pauses in the act of standing.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m going to do it alone,” she tells him. “If you’re there, he’ll only antagonize you and you know it. With…” She rests a hand on the swell of her stomach, both to make a point and for her own comfort. “It will be difficult enough to keep him on track.”

Coulson looks unhappy, but after a long moment, he nods.

“You’re right,” he admits. “But I’ll be watching from up here, okay? All you have to do is give the camera a nod and I’ll have that cell locked down so fast, Fort Knox’ll be jealous.”

At that, Jemma manages a smile.

“Thank you sir,” she says. “I hope it won’t be necessary.”

“Me, too.”

+++

As right as she knows she was to insist on going it alone, Jemma finds herself regretting the decision as she descends the stairs into Vault D. It’s dark down here, and the large, white barrier that splits the room in half seems to loom ominously as she approaches it.

She has to linger on the memory of Skye’s scream before she can find the courage to lift the tablet and turn the barrier transparent.

When she does, Grant is lounging on his bed—but he doesn’t stay there for long. A casual glance up turns into rocketing to his feet when he realizes it’s her, and it’s only half of one of her racing heartbeats before his eyes drop to her middle. As if in response, the baby gives a sudden, hard kick.

_Responding to her father_ , she thinks, near-hysterically. As if she instinctively recognizes that the safe, anonymous life her mother planned for her is now impossible.

Abruptly, Jemma realizes she’s shaking. She takes a seat in the Vault’s solitary chair before her knees can give out.

“Jemma,” Grant breathes. “You’re—?”

“Pregnant,” she says, as coolly as she can manage. “Yes. Well spotted.”

Her arch tone doesn’t appear to bother him—far from it, his entire face lights up. He looks truly, honestly delighted.

But only for a moment.

The smile is quick to fade, and after it, his face shutters. His jaw shifts in a way that chills her blood. The last time she saw that look on his face, he killed a man for frightening her.

“Is it mine?” he asks lowly.

In many cases, that would be an offensive question, but Jemma knows why he’s asking. Pregnancy has been kind to her (at least physically speaking; mentally and emotionally, she’s something of a mess), and she doesn’t at all look to be in her sixth month. The swell of her stomach, though obvious and distinctive, is more what one would expect from earlier in the pregnancy—perhaps the fourth month.

Four months ago, he was safely locked away in this cell.

Just for a moment, she’s tempted to lie. Fitz has already offered to stand in as the father for anyone who asks, and Grant has, it seems, always been suspicious of him. (He hid it well during their marriage, but once the truth came out, he made his feelings on her best friend terrifying clear.) It would be easy to rewrite history, to let him believe that she turned to Fitz in her anger and grief.

And it would be a weight off her shoulders, to know that Grant cared nothing for her child.

But she’s here to ask for his help. She can’t afford to antagonize him.

So she says, “Yes,” and watches the smile bloom across his face once more.

“When are you due?” he asks.

_That_ is a question she doesn’t want to answer.

“I didn’t come here to discuss this,” she says, a bit sharply. “You’ve said you’ll only speak to me, so—”

“So _talk_ to me,” he interrupts. “Just a few questions, baby, then I’ll be happy to answer any and all of yours.”

She bites the inside of her cheek, letting the pain sharpen her mind. Which will get her faster results: refusing to answer until he’s answered _her_ questions? Or getting his questions out of the way?

A look at his face decides her. He’s prepared to argue his case, and that will waste precious time she can’t afford.

“Fine,” she says. “December.”

Grant’s eyes narrow. “When in December?”

“The end.”

She can see him counting back, considering. They didn’t have many moments together in those last few months; after Lorelei, he was distant, and with the team ramping up their hunt for the Clairvoyant (who turned out to be _John_ , of all bloody people; that will never stop stinging at her), there simply wasn’t much time.

Mathematically speaking, there just aren’t very many possibilities. Her heart sinks as she watches him reach the correct conclusion.

“So it was the last time, then,” he says, pleased.

“Yes,” she agrees, meeting his eyes solidly. “At Providence.”

He pauses. His brow furrows. Jemma’s heart hammers against her ribcage, and her daughter kicks pointedly in protest. The hand she lifts to rub apologetically over her stomach trembles.

Then Grant smiles slowly, and her heart stops beating altogether.

“I see.” He sounds satisfied, and no wonder. “That’s fitting, isn’t it?”

They didn’t have sex at Providence—she wouldn’t allow it, not with his injuries and the relative lack of privacy—but that’s what she’s led the others to believe as her date of conception. The real date is so close as not to make a difference; no one will ever guess the truth.

No one, of course, except Grant.

The last time wasn’t Providence. Their daughter was conceived on the Bus, after he caught her in Cuba. Two days she spent as his—and John’s—prisoner, and she didn’t spend them in the Cage. It’s what she’s let the others think, what she’s pretended with all of her heart to be true, but…

She was weak. It shames her now, but it’s true. She was weak, and she gave in to her grief and her anger and her desperate, inescapable love for him.

Knowing full well who he was and what he had done, fully cognizant of the blood on his hands, she let him touch her. Not only that, she _begged_ for him to touch her. Repeatedly. He _made_ her beg, refused to so much as kiss her until he was certain—until they were _both_ certain, until she couldn’t hide from the truth—that she knew exactly what she was asking for and from whom.

She’ll never be able to wash away the shame from that. And that she knows precisely what he’s so pleased about—that it truly is _he_ who will be this child’s father, not some lie of a man he invented—makes it that much worse.

“Jemma?” he prompts.

“If you say so,” she says, a bit hoarsely. “Do you have any more questions, or are you prepared to answer mine?”

“No, that was all I needed.” Grant spreads his hands and rocks back on his heels. “Ask away.”

Despite the urgency of the situation, she finds she needs a moment to collect herself before she can ask. Her thoughts are scattered, her chest tight, the child they created together restless inside of her.

They both know the others would never believe him if he told them the truth. It isn’t leverage she’s given him, simply personal satisfaction.

Looking at his smile, she thinks she might have preferred the leverage.

“Baby?” he prompts, and she shoves all that away.

“We need to know about Hydra bases,” she says, and he sits right there on the floor in front of the barrier line and tells her everything he knows.

In all that time, his smile never once fades. And as secure as his cell is, as confident as she is in the Vault’s security…

Jemma can’t help feeling she’s made a terrible mistake.


End file.
